“Lehi was catching bombs in the warm-up, the backs were doing their own thing, the forwards were doing their own thing, but then Eli chased a bomb out of nowhere. They crashed, but it was completely accidental.
“I watched the whole thing. I thought Eli was in trouble. But he was cleared by two doctors – not one, but two doctors – and how can you [second-guess] what the doctors do?
“Had the docs seen that footage before the game, Eli wouldn’t have played. Every player wants to get on the field, but what do you do when the doctors tell you that you’re OK?”
Katoa has been in daily contact with Storm club medicos and an NRL doctor, and is hoping to be well enough to return to Australia next week.
Tonga coach Kristian Woolf stayed in New Zealand with Katoa for nine days and did not want to fly home until he was confident his player would make a full recovery.
Hopoate said Woolf had been supplying daily updates on Katoa’s recovery to the Tonga squad. “Eli has been texting a few of the boys, and he told me this week he was doing well,” Hopoate said.
Eli Katoa was on the end of this sickening hit before the Tonga-New Zealand clash.Credit: Nine
The NRL integrity unit has finalised its investigation into why Katoa was allowed to take to the field after appearing to have sustained a concussion in the warm-up, but will not hand down their findings until Katoa is released from hospital – and only once they have spoken to the Storm back-rower himself.
Sources with knowledge of the situation not authorised to speak publicly confirmed the recommendations could be announced by the end of next week.
Bennett, Gould, Cleary split over radical rule change
Some of the biggest names in rugby league are divided over the merits of a proposed change to the rules next season that would oblige scoring teams to take the resulting kick off.
This masthead revealed on Sunday that an NRL competition committee was looking at potential rule tweaks for the 2026 season, with the question of which team should kick off to be one of the top agenda items. Surveys will be sent to all stakeholders, including club CEOs, in the coming weeks.
Phil Gould and Wayne Bennett could be called on to the NRL’s new football innovation committee entrusted with mapping out the 2020 season.
As it stands, the team that scores a try or kicks a goal receives the kick-off, but some believe a fairer system would be to have the team that concedes points to return the kick-off, which happens in major competitions like the NFL.
Canterbury supremo Phil Gould made his feelings clear about the concept when he took to social media, in response to the Herald’s report. “Whoever it was that regurgitated the concept of the scoring team kicking off in the NRL should be publicly whipped,” Gould wrote on X.
“Please … they tried this rubbish years ago and it was a disaster.”
Four-time premiership winning coach Ivan Cleary was happy for the kick-off rule to remain, and questioned if his Penrith Panthers could have pulled off the miraculous 2023 grand final comeback against the Broncos if they had been forced to kick off rather than receive the ball each time they scored in the final 17 minutes of that decider.
“I think comebacks are really good in the game, and I’m not sure if you get that kind of thing with this rule,” Cleary said.
“When I started watching rugby league, no one would ever come back from 14 points down. Then [Brisbane] did it four weeks in a row.
“As a spectator, if your team’s up by a fair bit, you’re not feeling safe, and you can also feel optimistic if you’re down. I reckon that’s a really good thing.”
South Sydney coach Wayne Bennett loved when teams received the kick-off after they had just given up points during the Super League, and said it was time to bring it back, purely because it was the fairest system.
Bennett said teams deserved to be punished for poor ball control, but it was important to try and give both sides an even split of possession.
The seven-time premiership winner said Gould resisted change when the competition was unified after the Super League and Australian Rugby League stoush.
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“When we re-unified the game after Super League, ‘Gus’ [Gould] knocked it on the head then, he was no fan of it – which is OK, he’s entitled to his opinion. He obviously hasn’t changed his stance,” Bennett said.
“[By having the rule change] it makes it fair, you have equal opportunity with the ball. Ball control has always been important in the game, but it’s distorted because you can score, then you go back and get the ball back.”
with Adrian Proszenko